1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to computer systems, and more specifically relates to data security in a multi-nodal computer system environment.
2. Background Art
Distributed computing systems are increasingly being employed to overcome the limitations of traditional applications deployed in standard computing systems. A distributed computing system consists of multiple autonomous computers or nodes that communicate through a network. Distributed computing refers to the use of distributed systems to solve computational problems. In distributed computing, a problem is divided into many tasks, each of which is solved by one or more computer nodes. Distributed computing in a multi-nodal environment takes on many forms and can be exemplified by several of today's most promising computing technologies such as IBM® Corporation's Blue Gene®, grid computing, commercial clusters, and IBM® Corporation's RoadRunner. These new multi-nodal environments allow individual computer execution units to be linked to each other thru new programming paradigms such that a unit of work or a typical program is parsed out and computed in a distributed manner. Furthermore this spread of work is often left up to the system such that software designers have little or no way of knowing what pieces of the puzzle are running where.
In the typical application development environment, data security is implemented at an object level. An application depends on having access to certain objects based on the security rules/roles and setup implemented at both the operating system and database level. While security based on access to objects works fairly well in traditional computer systems, it does not address the security requirements of protecting data and allowing flexibility in accessing data in these more complex multi-nodal environments.